The Other Road Home chap 4

A/N: Thank you treewtich703! Much better title!

Thank you for ALL the wonderful reviews! I know there have been those hoping I’ll finish this one. There is only one I haven’t finished and I’m hoping the muse for the one will return at some point. This story IS complete on my computer. I just update, usually once a week, so that I have time to work on other stories. Besides, with reading the reviews and having the completed story handy, I have a chance to make any suggested, and plausible, changes without damaging the story or having to go back and rewrite things.

Most of this chapter is written in italics because it is Godric’s memories of Eric as he’s telling them to Sookie. SO much better than quotation marks sometimes!

Once again: Thank you all!

They were in the ground for barely ten minutes now. He was telling her the story of how he had chosen Eric, as he had promised.

Even back then he was a mighty warrior. It seemed like none could get close to him because his reach was so long. Someone did manage though. It had been a long battle. Many days long. They were all tired and wanted to go home to their wives and children but for him it was not to be.

He was stabbed in the stomach with a sword. Medicine wasn’t what it is now. He would have died quite painfully after several days of agony. His followers had built his bier and placed him upon it, ready to set it alight once his light left the world.

For me it was the work of only a few moments to kill his comrades so I could get to him.

I knelt over him, like I knelt over you.

He had heard the skirmish as I took his fellows and sent them on to Valhalla. “Do it, kill me. All I ask is that you light the fire, send me out in a blaze as it should be,” he said.

I asked him if he would be made like me, if he would wear the moniker of death with me. It was an easy decision for him, he didn’t ask the questions, he simply told me yes. I drained him and fed him my blood. I dug our grave far from the battlefield and lay with him for the three nights it took for his transformation to complete.

Even newly risen he was magnificent! Even covered in dirt, blood and gore he was the most handsome man I had ever seen, even to the day of his final death I had never met one to rival him.

He could feel the sun rising but he continued on with another story.

I will now tell you the story of his first punishment. It is one you can learn from if you can hear me. No matter, I will tell it as often as you wish to hear it.

He wasn’t yet a month vampire but he was very stubborn. He thought he could do what he wanted, that he could out stubborn his Maker.

He learned that night that it would never happen.

I had told him, taught him, reminded him several times a night that humans were to be left alive if at all possible. If we kept draining them eventually there would be none left for us to feed from and we would all either go mad from being forced to animal blood or we would meet the sun to end the torture of no food source.

Eric, my very stubborn child, learned his Maker was more stubborn. He was commanded to keep a human pet for a full turning of the moon. He was forbidden to feed from his pet, he was forbidden to have sex with his pet. He was to make sure the pet was fed, clothed, housed and cared for during the day while he was dead. During that time, and for quite some time after, he was commanded to only feed when I was with him and he was commanded to have no sex unless I was present.

I think even as a human his libido had no bounds for he was insatiable sexually. He was ready to go again almost as soon as he had finished! He asked, he begged, he pleaded every night of his punishment to be allowed to have sex, to be allowed to even masturbate for relief. I allowed it once at the midpoint of his punishment.

At the end of the month the pet went home, glamoured to the hilt, but he went home to his family. Eric was raring to go, to have more adventures because having a pet then meant you were severely restricted in where you could go and what you could do. If a vampire function allowed humans at all they were to be glamoured the whole time and leashed to their Master in order to avoid problems.

Since he was only allowed to attend functions that allowed pets his mobility became severely limited since we lived in a part of the world that rarely allowed pets, glamoured or not, to attend. During that month there was only one function that allowed pets as long as they were heavily glamoured, leashed and at their Master’s side the entire time they were there.

I glamoured him myself since Eric’s wasn’t strong enough yet to last for the length of time required. That was also the only night I allowed him to have sex. He was ecstatic until he realized that even though he could have sex, and as much as he desired, he could not orgasm. There is not much point to sex without orgasm for a vampire since it only increases the desire. It took once and, even though I had told him he could have as much sex as he wanted, he opted to forgo the pleasure since it would only end up frustrating him further.

Once he escorted his pet home and returned to me he knelt before me and thanked me for punishing him! That has not happened since!

Given the time when Eric was turned, and other options that Godric COULD have used for punishment, this was perfect :). We all know how hardheaded and stubborn our favourite Viking can be, how sexual. Taking away the options of feeding from a pet and having sex with him/her meant he actually had to concentrate on things like making sure his food source was well cared for instead of caring only for himself.

Godric chose something which wouldn’t harm his child but still get the point across: that humans are to be left alive unless circumstances prevent it. Somehow I think he learned his lesson.